Heidi Heitkamp never far from roots

There hasn’t really been a minute of downtime for North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp since she won a squeaker of an election in November.

She’s traveling the state, meeting with key constituencies, traveling to Washington for freshman orientation and learning how to deal with groups of reporters who peppered her with questions when she arrived on the Hill.

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“I really wasn’t expecting that part,” she said in a deep North Dakota accent. “I should have expected the gauntlet, but I just didn’t think of it! I’m not some rookie at this, but when you are at the North Dakota Capitol, you just walk in and go to your office.”

While she brings a folksy, down-home Upper Plains style to the Senate, her victory resonated with a larger political message for Democrats, showing that the diminished wing of moderates still has a place in the Senate, even from the most Republican of states.

Heitkamp is no stranger to politics. She has served as her state’s tax commissioner and attorney general. She ran for governor in 2000 and lost against her now “state mate,” as she calls him, Republican Sen. John Hoeven. She says she and Hoeven worked together for eight years when he ran the Bank of North Dakota and she worked on a commission that supervised the bank.

It was her deep North Dakota roots that helped her defeat the GOP’s Senate candidate, Rep. Rick Berg. Heitkamp won by fewer than 3,000 votes, but her victory boosted Democrats who once thought North Dakota would be lost to them. Indeed, Mitt Romney trounced President Barack Obama, and yet Heitkamp managed to pull ahead. Her ads stayed positive, portraying her as a moderate candidate who would stay true to the state. She has publicly said she disagreed with the president on a number of issues, most notably the Keystone XL pipeline: She advocates building it immediately.

“What was important to me was that people got a sense of who I am,” she said. “In my favorite ad, I talk about my dad building a ballpark and talk about my mom making sure everyone was able to play on it. … And then I say, basically, this is who I am, this is where I grew up and this is the values I will have. When I go to Washington, I’m not going to be for any special interest; I’ll be for the interests of North Dakota.”

During her eight years as attorney general, Heitkamp led the state’s effort in the national settlement with tobacco companies. She also successfully sued the Clinton administration over a land dispute. During the campaign, the former president cut an ad for her and stumped for her in Fargo.

“It’s important that you send somebody who will have credibility, who knows how to get along with people, who knows how to listen to them, who knows how to make agreements,” Clinton said of Heitkamp in October.